What a good thing I had to spend my professional life being polite to people. Practice, they say, makes perfect.
Arrived, with 2 minutes to spare, having allowed 1hr 30 for a google projected journey time of 1 hr 05mins. The local highways department had, after sending me down an unknown road with nice red H signs, silently abandoned me at a roundabout with only a plethora of brown tourist signs ...satnav could be heard scratching its head...3 village idiots later I spotted a post lass, who turned out to be Ukrainian, and gave splendid instructions to the right place where, sadly, there was neither signage nor spaces... 2 more idiots provided me with a scenic tour of the hospital environs.
Went back to the "main entrance", on the advice of an elderly and charming West Indian who said he didn't know, as new to the area, but thought there might be somebody to ask near that. Spotted somebody leaving the car park and earned violent glares from other waiting drivers as I whipped in to his vacated space quicker than a fox going to earth when the hounds are out. Outside what appeared to be the main entrance, mostly blocked by wheel chairs, and and bearing the sign "staff only" I found a despairing Scotsman who wished to know if I "kenned the way in?" "No" I responded "but this will do for me if it opens" It did and we barged in, eventually finding, from passing staff, that we had long walks but clear (ish) routes to our destinations.
Barely had time for a pee, which had become an urgent necessity, before my name was called. A very tired nurse desired to take my blood pressure:190/105. Looking a little shaken she escorted me to a chair and urged me to recover for a while before she took it again and seemed much relieved to find it had fallen to 150/65. What is it usually? 120 (or 130)/ 65 (or 75).
And then to the Consultant. I shook him courteously by the hand and made a firm resolution to treat him with the manners appropriate to short tempered Judge when representing a pretty dubious client with a weak case. So I emerged 20 minutes later rather proud of myself. I had answered all his irrelevant questions, without losing my cool, as well as those to which he had the answers in front of him had he bothered to read the notes. The nearest he came to a relevant question was to enquire who lived with me - maybe "widow" + "next of kin 4 hours away" isn't something the NHS usually writes down - only they did last time I was in with a chest infection...I don't know why I bothered really since he clearly didn't listen to the answers. I had confirmed my original view: the man was and is an idiot.
I quite enjoyed his suggestion that the day I began my next flare that I should immediately have my bloods taken to check my ESR and CRP...my last blood tests took 6 weeks to arrange and then they lost the results...but I didn't tell him. After all it was in the notes!
The nice nurse, who had damned near choked over his weird assumption that anything was immediate in NHS 2023, kindly identified the new main entrance for me, nobody had rammed the car, and I made my escape....Back to self managing the palindromic arthritis (and all the other ills that flesh is heir to) with the help of my good old GP...
